


Shots Fired

by statusquo_ergo



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Parody, Satire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 13:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17581847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Dear Mister Specter,For the past 10+ years, I have followed your career with great interest through news events, interviews, and web research. Your win record in the courtroom and at the negotiating table, coupled with your belief in hard work and dedication to your craft, is exemplary. In addition, I know you have a personal acquaintance with Travis Tanner, my close friend Clark Kent’s roommate in his time at Yale.“What the fuck is this?” Harvey asks. Mike only shakes his head again, utterly lost, and Harvey pinches his lips tight and moves on to the next paragraph.(In other words, Mike and Harvey get caught up in a wrongful termination suit that gets…a little more complicated than they expected.)





	Shots Fired

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by a particularly aggressive plagiarist, who, among other things, stole one of my fics and turned it from Marvey into Harvey/OFC, which I am now parodying the fuck out of for my own amusement. This is _not_ intended as a blanket criticism of OFCs, or OMCs, or OCs in general; this is a cathartic response to a very specific situation, and, if anything, it’s a rebuke of plagiarism and straightwashing.
> 
> My eternal thanks to everyone who assisted in the crafting and production of this fic!

“So,” Mike says somewhat bemusedly, walking into Harvey’s office without knocking, as is his habit. “You know the Frost case?”

Harvey raises his eyebrows and looks up from his laptop. “The wrongful termination thing?”

“Yeah.” Still with a furrow in his brow, Mike sits in one of the chairs on the opposite side of Harvey’s desk and stares at the paper in his hand as though it’s somehow managed to wrong him. “I just got an email from the opposing attorney.”

Frowning, Harvey lowers the lid of his laptop a few degrees and rests his hands on his desk. “You’ve had this case for a week, what the hell does he think he’s gonna get out of you?”

“She,” Mike corrects. “And…I have no idea, but I don’t think it’s what she wants from me, I think it’s what she wants from _us._ More specifically what she wants from _you._ ”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Mike shakes his head dazedly. With mounting concern, Harvey takes the paper he offers; it seems to be nothing more than a memorandum, a routine notice he’s nearly as likely to throw in the garbage as he is to review thoroughly.

 _Dear Mister Specter_ (the memo reads) _,_

_For the past 10+ years, I have followed your career with great interest through news events, interviews, and web research. Your win record in the courtroom and at the negotiating table, coupled with your belief in hard work and dedication to your craft, is exemplary. In addition, I know you have a personal acquaintance with Travis Tanner, my close friend Clark Kent’s roommate in his time at Yale._

“What the fuck is this?” Harvey asks, looking at Mike askance as the paper flaps in his grip. Mike only shakes his head again, utterly lost, and Harvey pinches his lips tight and moves on to the next paragraph.

_I have had the privilege of honing my legalistic abilities at a wide variety of law offices. I have worked with Tony Giannopoulos, Joseph Morgan, Barack Obama, and several others. In my current position, I am a name partner at Molotov & Lucifer LLC, one of the largest full service firms in the northeast._

Harvey looks up again, uncertain of whether to laugh outright or ask Mike to check him into a mental institution for having hallucinated…whatever that was.

“Keep going,” Mike prompts, so Harvey does.

_I would greatly appreciate an opportunity to meet with you in regards to my client, Miss Anastasia Frost, and her outrageous dismissal from the board of the Verica Group. I will be available at your convenience the week of March 11 – 15 to discuss the matter over dinner._

“You think she knows today’s the twelfth?” Harvey asks indifferently as he glances up from the florid signature ( _Cecelia Velia Molotov, Esq., Molotov & Lucifer LLC_).

“You think she knows this is my case?” Mike retorts.

Harvey’s gaze drops back to the mysterious memo; he skims it again, but the text reads as bizarrely the second time as it did the first.

“You’re sure this is legit?”

Mike shrugs. “I called the firm, they said Frost hired this woman as her representative.”

Harvey reviews the letter once more before he hands it back.

“Well,” he says as Mike slouches down in his seat, “I think we can agree on one thing about Miss Cecelia Velia Molotov.”

Mike raises his eyes with obvious effort. “Yeah?”

Folding his hands together and setting them on his desk, Harvey sets his shoulders back and narrows his eyes.

“In all sincerity.”

Righting his posture, Mike leans forward attentively.

“That is the dumbest name I’ve ever heard.”

Mike snorts.

– – –

“She did say seven-thirty,” Mike says as he checks his watch for the third time tonight. “Right?”

“That’s what it said in the email,” Harvey replies, perusing his menu unnecessarily as Mike rests his chin in his palm.

As if on cue, a slender woman in towering stilettos, her rich mahogany hair arranged to both frame her dangerously pale face and cascade over the shoulders of her black skirt suit, stalks up to their table, pursing her savagely blood red lips and insinuating herself into the chair opposite Harvey.

“Mister Specter,” she says apathetically, drumming her manicured nails against the tabletop. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

Harvey glances at Mike, who frowns at the mysterious stranger but seems content to follow Harvey’s lead.

“Cecelia Molotov?” Harvey presumes, setting his menu down and meeting her gaze.

She smiles smugly. “Harvey Specter. Are we going to get down to business or am I just here to waste my time?”

“What business?” Mike cuts in. “I’ve been working on this case for three days, I haven’t even spoken to Miss Frost’s former employers yet.”

Harvey’s hackles raise when Cecelia Molotov turns her scornful glare to Mike, but he keeps his mouth shut.

“Quiet, puppy,” she taunts, “the grownups are talking.”

Stunned, Mike freezes in his seat, goggling at their peculiar guest. Offended on Mike’s behalf but not quite so paralyzed, Harvey recovers first, folding his hands together and setting them on the table behind his plate as he offers her a bitter smile.

“I assume you’re aware that this is, in fact, Mister Ross’s case.”

“Oh, Harvey,” Cecelia simpers, fondling her water glass, “don’t you think it would be more prudent to cut past the treacle? Get right down to brass tacks?”

Mike’s back tenses, but Cecelia seems not to notice.

Harvey thins his lips. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well surely you agree that it’s in neither of our best interests for this case to drag on,” she says with a nauseating sweetness.

“Of course,” Harvey replies cautiously as he tries not to let her rapid attitudinal changes make him lightheaded. “If your client is willing to admit to her wrongdoings, we can clear this up right now.”

Cecelia smiles, cradling her cheek in her hand and staring deeply into Harvey’s eyes. “Come on, Harvey,” she croons. “I didn’t earn my reputation as the queen of the court by _losing_ cases. Now, I won’t say I expected going up against Jessica Pearson’s pet closer to be an easy fight, but rest assured…I’ll make you wish you’d never left that mailroom.”

Harvey’s eyes find Mike’s for an instant, and Cecelia titters softly to herself.

“You think I don’t know about that?” she teases. “I assure you, I make it my business to know everything about the people I’m dealing with. Especially…”

She pauses long enough that Harvey looks to Mike again, but he just shakes his head scantly.

“Especially,” she repeats, “when I’m looking out for my family.”

Seeming to think that enough of an impact to go out on, she stands from her chair with a cocky grin and turns to saunter away from the table.

“Are you and Miss Frost related?” Harvey asks, raising his voice. “We could have you thrown off this case right now for conflict of interest.”

“Nice try,” she mocks, swinging her hips as she walks. Glancing back over her shoulder, she narrows her eyes at Harvey in an obvious attempt at coyness. “But I was talking about my brother.”

Her gazes flickers to Mike, and she winks before sashaying out the door.

A hush seems to have settled over the restaurant.

Waiters and patrons move about in the background—one in the foreground, on his way past them to the kitchen—and everything is deathly silent.

Gradually, as noise begins to return to his ears first as a staticky hum and then a soft murmur, finally a normal clamor appropriate to the evening rush, Harvey turns to Mike, his jaw slightly slack.

“Something you want to tell me?”

Mike blinks the astounded haze from his eyes and looks at Harvey nervously.

“I swear to god,” he says, “I do not have a sister. I have never had a sister, and, as far as I know, I _will_ never have a sister.”

Harvey purses his lips.

“So.”

Mike turns and stares owlishly after her, and Harvey coughs.

“She’s nuts.”

Reaching blindly across the table, Mike clasps Harvey’s hand.

“Am I just being stupid?”

Turning his palm up to interlock their hands properly, Harvey turns to him and touches his free hand to Mike’s chin, redirecting his gaze from Cecelia Molotov’s path back to Harvey’s face.

“I doubt it,” he says. “About what?”

Mike’s eyes dart back to the door before he manages to lock his attention back on Harvey.

“She’s nuts,” he repeats. “Seriously nuts. She thinks I’m her brother. She’s— I can’t tell if she’s flirting with you or trying to decide how to murder you.”

Harvey hums under his breath.

“I’ll put Vanessa on it tomorrow.”

Taking a deep breath, Mike puts an obvious effort into releasing the tension in his shoulders as the corner of his mouth quirks up in a grateful little smile, and Harvey leans in to kiss him tenderly.

“We’ll be fine.”

Mike squeezes his hand.

“Yeah.”

– – –

“I just got off the phone with the guys at Verica,” Mike says, strolling into Harvey’s office with his hands in his pockets. “They’re gonna send their responses to my inquiries over tomorrow, they said to call if I need anything else.”

“Nice guys,” Harvey says, gathering some of the papers strewn across his desk into a pile. “Speaking of reports, I don’t know if you’re interested, but Vanessa dropped hers off about an hour ago.”

Mike crosses the rest of the way to Harvey’s desk, shaking his head with a wry grin as he leans his hip against it. “I’ve been waiting an entire month for this, how could I not be interested?”

Harvey arches his eyebrows. “Well, unless I'm missing something, you’ve never been in a position to investigate opposing counsel before. No existing precedent.”

“Hey.” Mike leans in a little closer, taking his hand out of his pocket to clasp Harvey’s pointedly. “I’m not the one who made this personal.”

“What am I, your property?”

“Till death do us part, old man.”

Harvey grins in that way he has that makes his eyes crinkle up at the corners, and Mike laughs in such a way that Harvey knows he doesn’t mean to but can’t help himself. It’s a pretty good thing they’ve got going, he thinks fondly, and if this lunatic thinks she’s going to get in the middle of it, she’s got another thing coming.

“Come on, rookie,” he says, holding up the report. “Let’s see what we’re up against.”

Mike smooths his thumb against Harvey’s knuckles and releases his grip, and Harvey flips straight past the lengthy index to the first full page of documentation. “Family,” it’s titled, a list of men and women and an assortment of personal details and background information about each of them. For a woman who apparently prides herself on her coy mannerisms and alleged courtroom prowess, Cecelia Molotov certainly doesn’t seem to live a particularly clandestine life.

The first real surprise, though, comes at the top of the section’s second page.

“Looks like she might not be as crazy as we thought,” Harvey says. “She does have a brother named Michael; Michael Lavon, he seems normal enough. Majored in Engineering at Cornell, and there’s no evidence of contact with his sister in…over ten years. Wow.” Harvey looks up as a crease mars his brow. “I wonder if they had a falling out.”

“Lavon?” Mike asks. “Is she married?”

Harvey turns back to the first page of the section where Vanessa’s arranged a diagram of Cecelia Molotov’s family tree for easy reference. “I don’t think so,” he says, “although it looks like she was engaged at one point to a guy named Neal Bennett.”

“Jeez, don’t tell Katrina.”

Harvey scans Neal’s profile. “No relation. But apparently their engagement was interesting enough that Vanessa’s written up a whole other section about it.”

“Well don’t keep me in suspense,” Mike teases, dropping down onto Harvey’s lounge chair and folding his hands behind his head. Nodding idly, Harvey thumbs to a page labeled “Engagement,” subheading “Dissolution,” skimming for keywords before his gaze lands on a particular phrase.

“Shit.”

Lowering his hands, Mike sits up abruptly. “What is it?”

Harvey tenses his jaw. “Domestic violence,” he murmurs. “Apparently she and this guy were high school sweethearts; he proposed to her at graduation, they went off to Yale together, and halfway through their junior year he filed for an order of protection.”

Mike drops his elbows to his knees and presses his clasped hands to his mouth. “Fuck.”

“Mm.”

After a moment’s thought, Mike scowls darkly, sitting up with an abruptness that means he’s just gotten an idea he should’ve had much earlier. “Hang on,” he challenges. “If she’s got domestic violence charges against her, how the hell did she get past the Committee on Character and Fitness?”

Harvey presses his lips together in a narrow line as he reads down the rest of the page. “Looks like the charges were dropped; he revoked the request two weeks after the initial filing, said it was all his fault. He’d driven her to it.”

Mike’s lips part in disbelief as Harvey hurries through the rest of the section, the scant details of events pieced together from the scraps Vanessa was able to find. Two friends of Cecelia’s, Roxy and Nancy, seem to have been the case’s key witnesses, Roxy claiming to have borne witness to Neal’s physical abuse—two instances of nondescript “brutalization” for which Cecelia never sought medical attention, much less filed any sort of report, and no one else seems to have known about—and Nancy recounting multiple incidents of supposed gaslighting on which she refused to elaborate beyond repeating the word “gaslight” conjugated in a variety of ways.

“This smell like bullshit to you?” Harvey asks, opening the report to the page on the court proceedings and handing it over. Mike reads the whole thing in about two seconds, passing it back with a nauseated look on his face.

“Harvey, we can’t just win this case,” he says darkly. “This woman is dangerous, we’ve gotta get her out of the Bar.”

“We ought to have her arrested,” Harvey mutters as he turns to the next page. “Professional,” it says, subheading “Career Track.” For all the vainglory in her original email to Mike, there isn’t much evidence of a particularly impressive pedigree; her so-called “work with” Tony Giannopoulos appears not to extend beyond a summer internship at Giannopoulos Holdings between her second and third years of law school, which she completed without any particular accolades, to say nothing of the fact that the only connection Vanessa was able to find to Barack Obama was Cecelia Molotov’s attendance at his second inauguration.

After a few minutes of silence, he looks over at Mike again, but whatever mocking jab he was about to craft withers the instant he sees the determined hardness in Mike’s eyes. It’s not an unfamiliar look, by any means, but something about the swiftness of it, the suddenness and lack of warning, gives him pause.

“You okay?” he ventures, setting the report down on his desk.

Mike’s frown deepens.

“I don’t know what it is,” he says, “but something about this doesn’t feel right.”

“Plus or minus the fact that everything she says about herself is a load of shit?”

Mike shakes his head. “I’m serious,” he insists. “The fact that she sent a letter to _me_ that was addressed to _you,_ the way she called you ‘Jessica’s best closer,’ the—the fact that she knew about the mailroom, it just…”

His words trail off as his eyes go slightly out of focus, and Harvey reaches over to grip Mike’s hunched shoulder.

“You know I’m taking this seriously, right?”

Clasping his hands tightly together, Mike raises his eyes to meet Harvey’s and nods.

“I know.”

Harvey rubs Mike’s arm soothingly.

“We’ll get her.”

Mike smiles.

– – –

“Mike,” Harvey proclaims, marching into his office with an overabundance of enthusiasm specifically designed to rouse Mike’s suspicion.

“You know,” Mike says slowly, “we _do_ drug test here.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Harvey sits on the opposite side of Mike’s desk with a smirk on his face. “Have you made any progress on the Frost case?”

Mike frowns, opening one of his desk drawers and flicking through the contents. “Not recently,” he says, pulling out an accordion folder. “With everything I've gotten from the guys at Verica, I think we’ve got a pretty tight argument; honestly, we could nail her for identity fraud if we really wanted to, but they’re just going for the embezzlement charge and I'd rather not kick this to the feds if we don’t have to. Anyway, Molotov hasn’t contacted me since she asked which precedent I was planning to cite to justify my case and I told her to go to hell.”

“Yeah, that’s how I remember it,” Harvey says, waving him off when Mike offers the files. “So you two haven’t spoken in, what is it now, about a week? Two weeks?”

“Yes,” Mike drawls, leaning back in his chair. “Why?”

Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Harvey slides it across the desk as Mike’s frown deepens.

“What, is she finally planning on actually introducing you to her client?”

“Just read it.”

Offering one last skeptical glance, Mike bends over the phone and scrolls through the email displayed there. Harvey watches with some amusement as his expression becomes increasingly distressed, culminating in a baffled gape as he finishes and looks back up.

“Is…”

Harvey arches his eyebrows, and Mike closes his mouth and tries again.

“Am I reading this right?

Harvey tips his head side to side. “Depends on what you think you’re reading.”

“This is— Is she asking you out on a _date?_ ”

Retrieving his phone, Harvey grins and slips it back into his pocket. “That’s what I thought.”

“You—” Mike fumbles, “you, you can’t _go._ ”

“You worried?”

“That she’s going to try to kill you and bury you in a shallow grave? Yeah, I’m worried!”

“I’ll bring a whistle, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“ _Harvey!_ ”

“Mike.” Harvey reaches out across the desk to take his hand, looking imploringly into his eyes. “I can take care of myself. She probably just wants to see if she can get some inside information about the case.”

Mike narrows his eyes to comically thin slivers. “So even if she doesn’t want to skin you alive, she’s trying to trap you in an ethics violation.”

“Which I won’t commit,” Harvey soothes. “At the very least, I’ll get a free dinner out of this; at most, I’ll find out her strategy. Win-win.”

“Unless you _die._ ”

“And if I promise to come home in one piece?”

Mike’s efforts to stare him down last only a few tortured seconds before he relents, his shoulders dropping wearily.

“You promise?”

Harvey pats his hand.

“I do.”

Mike sighs.

“Okay.”

– – –

Because he’s a gentleman, Harvey lets Cecelia Molotov choose the restaurant, and because he knows the value of discretion, he doesn’t point out that she won’t be winning him over with these lousy production values. He’s had worse pizza than the stuff they serve at La Pizza Fresca, but this is a date disguised as a business meeting, and, well. It’s pizza.

Plus, she’s late.

Fidgeting mindlessly with the brief Mike emailed him, a scarce summary of maybe a third of the information their clients at Verica handed over, Harvey considers texting Mike to complain about her tardiness—or maybe ask him what he’s wearing, because he’s pretty sure it’ll make Mike laugh—when Cecelia Molotov appears out of nowhere, clad in a practically skintight green dress that wouldn’t be out of place at the Met gala but is possibly the least work-appropriate garment he’s ever seen.

“Sorry, darling,” she says innocently as she takes her seat in such a way that her breasts seem to suddenly go up a cup size. “But, you know. Some of us have real jobs.”

Harvey elects to let that one slide, putting on his most charming smile and concealing his phone in his jacket pocket. “Of course,” he simpers. “Speaking of jobs, you said in your email that you wanted to talk about the case.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” she dismisses easily. “I didn’t come here just to discuss business, Mister Specter, I came here so we could get to know each other a little better, if we’re to be working together.”

As if this case hasn’t already been going on for months. Harvey tries not to grimace.

“Fair enough,” he says. “So what’s the first thing I should know about Cecelia Molotov?”

It’s vague, it’s open-ended; he doesn’t care about the answer itself so much as the direction she chooses to go with it, and it’s more telling than anything else that she chooses to lower her gaze coquettishly and raise her hand to order rather than respond.

“Vodka martini, please,” she says, winking at Harvey, who smiles apologetically at the poor waiter. “And he’ll have a glass of your finest whiskey.”

He will?

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the waiter says politely, “but we don’t serve cocktails here; would you care to see the wine menu?”

“Just water, thanks,” Harvey says before Cecelia can reply. She pouts in what he suspects is supposed to be an endearing manner, and Harvey clears his throat.

“You’re pretty young to be a name partner,” he tries as the waiter scurries away. “You must’ve led an interesting life to get to where you are.”

Cecelia sighs under her breath, grinning to herself as though the assumption was a particularly scandalous one and looking up at Harvey through her dark lashes. “My father was a surgeon,” she divulges, “and my mother was a housewife; neither of them approved of my decision to go to law school, so I had to pay my own way, waitressing and the like. Taking odd jobs here and there, picking up cash wherever I could find it.”

For a moment, Harvey fears she’s about to reveal that she sold test answers to her college dean’s daughter.

“After I graduated from Yale,” she says then, a time jump so abrupt that it nearly gives Harvey whiplash, “I was hired at Hale Martin Lahey, mainly, as a woman, to fill their diversity quota. You know how it is.”

Harvey smiles dully.

“Well, I put in my hours, I climbed the ranks. I became a senior partner; the youngest in the firm’s history, in fact.” Smiling deviously, Cecelia leans forward as though the next part is a secret: “Luckily for me, Callum Lucifer caught wind of an opportunity, so to speak, and he and I worked together to oust the managing partners and take control of the firm.”

Well, that’s…familiar. Harvey nods, exaggerating the wideness of his eyes and hoping she’ll mistake his startled befuddlement for awe at her accomplishments as he pretends not to notice the remarkable similarities between her life story and Jessica’s.

“That’s a hell of a story,” he applauds as she waves her hand, turning away with obviously faked modesty and utterly ignoring the waiter arriving with their waters.

“Oh, no, I work too much!” she objects laughingly. “But,” she lowers her brow, instantly becoming grave, “you know how it is.”

He hums agreeably without a terribly clear idea of what she’s talking about. Every corporate attorney he knows is on more or less the same ridiculous on-call schedule, devoting the lion’s share of their life to their work, but somehow he senses that Cecelia isn’t talking about their profession in general terms; maybe Mike was right to be wary of this meeting after all.

“Of course,” he evades.

Smiling coldly, she takes the bait like she’s been waiting for it.

“I know you keep your distance,” she murmurs. “You want to create an image of yourself as the man no one can touch, the man no one can understand. The man whose motivations, whose choices are at a level so above the lives of these plebeians surrounding you that no one could ever understand why you do what you do; the things you’ve been through, the things you’ve seen have hardened you, made you a predator, but no one is willing to look past the monstrous facade to find the scars, the fragility underneath.”

His mind instantly conjures images of Jessica, taking Harvey under her wing and building his career from the ground up; of Louis, attempting to resign in shame over his misguided efforts to betray Harvey to Daniel Hardman; Donna, turning over evidence against Cameron Dennis to protect Harvey; Mike, loving Harvey unconditionally and swearing that nothing will stop him loving him for the rest of his life. Holding tight to the memories, Harvey smiles at Cecelia Molotov in a commiserating sort of way, as though they’ve found their common ground, as though she’s uncovered a great secret he’s gone well out of his way to keep hidden from the world at large.

For her part, Cecelia merely sips her ice water, watching him out of the corner of her eye and doing her best emulation of a Bond girl as a waitress arrives to take their orders.

Halfway through the words “striped bass,” Harvey’s phone chimes with a text alert.

_Still alive?_

Harvey arches his eyebrows at the welcome interruption and makes a snap decision.

“Shit,” he grumbles. “God dammit, Mike.”

“Oh?” Cecelia pipes up, dismissing the waitress indifferently and propping her chin on the back of her hand. “Harvey, is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” he grumbles, “I just found out that Mike accidentally violated a HIPAA agreement, and now I need to make sure our client doesn’t sue us into next week for sending her psychiatric evaluation to her orthopedic surgeon. Sorry,” he fumbles as he stands, dropping his napkin down on the table. “Can we reschedule?”

Cecelia sticks out her bottom lip in another attempt at a sultry pout, and Harvey does his very best to keep from rolling his eyes.

“The puppy can’t clean up his own mess?” she asks sweetly, and this time Harvey doesn’t stop himself from gritting his teeth.

“What can I say,” he invents. “They don’t call me the best closer in New York for nothing.”

Cecelia sighs. “Well, alright,” she says, setting her hands on the table in front of her primly. “But I expect you to make this up to me, Specter.”

“Let’s try for next week,” he offers as he buttons his jacket. “I’ll be in touch.”

“See you in a few days,” she says. It sounds like a promise, like a temporary farewell at an airport boarding area, and Harvey conceals the tremor it sends up his back by shrugging on his coat.

“Have a nice night,” he says.

She waves at him with her fingers.

“Night, Harvey.”

– – –

“Hey,” Mike greets, dropping his head over the back of the armchair where he sits to gaze upside-down at Harvey sweeping into the apartment. “How was dinner?”

Harvey shudders violently, shucking off his coat and jacket and beginning to unbutton his shirt.

“I feel disgusting.”

“Aw.” Righting himself, Mike rolls to his feet and pads over to the liquor cart by the window as Harvey pours himself a glass of Scotch and begins to down it almost as quickly. “Did you get anything good?”

Harvey shudders again, setting his half-empty glass back down and furrowing his brow. “She’s a pathological liar, I can tell you that much. I asked her how she’d become a managing partner so young, and she basically recited Jessica’s history at me.”

Mike frowns. “She didn’t think you’d notice?”

“I guess not.”

Setting his hand on his hip, Mike turns away, pacing back to the living room set and staring intently at the floor. Harvey downs the rest of his Scotch before he goes to join him, grabbing his wrist and pulling them both down to the couch; Cecelia Molotov is starting to freak Harvey out a little bit, too, but he’ll be damned if he lets Mike lose sleep over her.

“So how was your evening?” he asks as he reaches for the television remote.

Mike lowers his face abashedly. “Are you gonna kill me if I say I was just sitting around waiting for you to come back?”

Hooking his arm around Mike’s neck, Harvey drags him in close and presses a kiss to his temple. “So was I,” he mutters.

Mike laughs.

Harvey’s text alert chimes.

Mike stops laughing.

“Harvey,” he says tersely, leaning away from his embrace. “Who’s texting you at eleven thirty on a Friday night?”

“Oh no, my secret other family,” Harvey deadpans as he fishes his phone out of his pocket. “I don’t know, it’s probably Louis having a nervous breakdown. Maybe Jessica’s decided to give me that extra week of vacation I so richly deserve.”

“We still haven’t made it to Buenos Aires,” Mike points out, leaning back in to drape himself over Harvey’s shoulders. “Who’s it from?”

Harvey quirks his lips at the unfamiliar number; for some reason, the message preview is blank, but as far as he knows, simply opening the text can’t do any damage to his phone.

“Let’s find out.”

They do not, in fact, find out, although Harvey has a pretty good guess when a surprisingly clear photograph of Mike loads on the screen, obviously taken without his awareness or, likely, his consent; a moment later, a single line of text appears and Mike freezes, his fingers digging into Harvey’s arm as he suddenly stops breathing.

 _Don’t forget,_ the text warns. _I know your secret._

Reflexively, Harvey reaches up to place his free hand over Mike’s, hoping to calm him or reassure him or even just remind him that he’s not alone.

“Don’t worry,” he says, willing himself to believe it, convincing himself that he does. “She doesn’t have any proof of anything, everything’s going to be fine.”

Mike shakes his head slowly, his wide eyes fixed on the small screen.

“ _Shit._ ”

Harvey rubs Mike’s hand gently.

Well put.

– – –

It’s nearly eleven o’clock by the time Harvey gives up on making any progress on all the shit going down with Soloff and starts puttering around on his computer instead. As it turns out, it doesn’t even matter, being that Donna chooses more or less the same moment to step into his office with an expression on her face like she isn’t quite sure whether to burst out laughing or possibly call the police.

Yeah. Harvey knows the feeling.

“What now?” he asks exasperatedly when she stops in front of his desk.

Donna pinches her lips together. “Have you seen her website?”

Harvey frowns and sits back in his chair. “Whose website?”

Coming to the side of his desk, she reaches out and pulls his laptop toward herself.

“Cecelia Molotov’s.”

Turning the screen to face him, she pushes it back, and Harvey subtly checks his desk calendar just to be sure—just to be _sure_ —that the current year is, in fact, twenty fifteen as opposed to, say, nineteen ninety-nine.

“This,” he says uncertainly as he scrolls down the page to the _©2015_ notice in the footer. “This is a joke, right?”

Donna shakes her head.

“I’m afraid not.”

Harvey scrolls back to the top of the page and stares at the badly pixelated grey spiderweb pattern tiled over an off-brand black background, the flat white banner fixed at the top of the page with the name “Cecelia Moldova,” for some reason, printed in Papyrus font above a seductive and unmistakable photograph. Beneath the photograph is an unformatted table of blue-text links—titled _My Wattpad Fics_ , whatever that means—that don’t really match anything else on the page but seem to make up the entirety of its content.

“What _is_ this?”

Donna wrings her hands awkwardly as she gathers her thoughts. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Mike was freaking out this morning that she’d found out about Harvard, and about Lola, and about _him,_ and I thought I’d see if I could find out anything about her, for— You know, for leverage, and I found…this.”

“Life is not a Movie,” the first link reads. “Surprise!” reads the second.

“Filled with Love in Darkness,” reads the third, and how exactly is he supposed to not click on that?

_Harvey watched Celestine pack up her suitcase for her business trip, considering asking again if he could accompany her even though he knew his girlfriend of many years would say no because he was needed at the firm._

Abruptly, Harvey shoves the computer away before he can read any further, and Donna touches her fingertips to the desk and leans worriedly toward him.

“What’s wrong?” she presses as he feels blood begin to rush to his head.

_Harvey._

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Harvey?”

Unable to articulate what he’s just read, he merely slides the laptop toward her, hoping she won’t be frightened off by his reaction. To her credit, she makes it through a lot more of the text than he did, but then again, it’s not… _about her._

Harvey shudders.

“This is…terrible,” Donna says as her eyes dart across the screen. “This is— Oh, god, Harvey, I don’t need to know everything that goes on in your bedroom, but _please_ tell me you’ve never thought of Mike as your son.”

“What?” Grabbing the laptop back, Harvey scans the text, landing on the line “Harvey saw him as his brother or his son and wanted to protect him” and very nearly laughing out loud, except for the way the words make his skin crawl.

“How close are you and Mike to arresting this woman?”

“We’re aiming for disbarment,” he corrects. “And to be honest with you, most of the evidence we’ve got so far is circumstantial.”

Nodding to herself, Donna sets her mouth firmly in that way she has that tells him she’s cooking up an idea of somewhat questionable legality, but that whatever the results are will almost certainly be worth the hassle.

“Alright,” she resolves. “You trust me?”

He smiles grimly. “Against my better judgment.”

Standing up straight, she offers a reassuring nod and takes a step back toward the door.

“You’ll be glad you did.”

Harvey sighs and decides not to point out that that’s largely what he’s afraid of.

– – –

Harvey sits wearily at the bar, cradling his Scotch as his vision goes in and out of focus on the colorful array of liquor bottles lining the mirror on the opposite wall. The court date for the Frost case creeps closer every day, and Cecelia Molotov-Moldova-Lavon hasn’t even acknowledged any of their efforts to meet and discuss a possible settlement, much less agreed to take them up on any of their fairly generous offers. On the other hand, she hasn’t filed any reports against Mike with the Appellate Division, or the feds, so maybe he should just count his blessings and shut up.

“Top you off?” the bartender asks. Harvey looks up at him strangely; Smitty is a friendly guy, attentive and obliging in the way a good bartender ought to be, but he also knows Harvey pretty well. Well enough to know that he’ll ask for a refill if he wants one.

“I’m good, thanks,” he says, pulling the still mostly-full tumbler toward himself.

Smitty looks at something behind Harvey’s back and pinches his lips together. “It’s already been paid for,” he says.

Harvey closes his eyes bracingly, hoping against hope that he hasn’t been comped by the person he thinks he has.

No such luck.

“I don’t like to see a handsome young man all alone at the bar on a Wednesday night,” Cecelia Molotov croons, sliding into the vacant seat beside him as Smitty turns away to hide his pained wince.

Taking a breath, Harvey looks over at her with an ambiguous expression on his face, hopefully not too far from intrigue and not too close to loathing.

“Cecelia,” he greets her smoothly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Pleasure’s mine,” she replies, resting her elbow on the bar and trailing her index finger through a little puddle of condensation. “I’ve been looking into you, Harvey Specter; you’re quite an impressive man.”

Looking into him? What happened to “following his career with great interest”?

Whatever. Restraining himself to a bland smile, Harvey nods into his drink. “Don’t I know it.”

She hums agreeably. “Fifth in your year at Harvard Law; Assistant District Attorney under Cameron Dennis for two years and _undefeated_ at trial; arriving at Pearson Hardman as a sophomore associate and rising to Junior Partner within only _five years_ _…_ ”

Harvey laughs under his breath, trying very hard not to let the part about his time at the DA’s rattle him as Cecelia smiles coquettishly and looks up at him from under her lashes.

“In fact,” she muses, “as far as I can tell, there’s only one spot on your permanent record.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. It’s not that he hasn’t been expecting this conversation, or dreading it; it’s just that he figured it would take place somewhere a little more private, a little more…under the table. With a touch of subtlety, perhaps.

“And what’s that,” he panders.

She smirks. “Why, that boy of yours,” she whispers, so softly that he has to strain to catch the full sentence. “He’ll be the death of you, you know.”

He sure will, Harvey thinks wryly, although they probably mean it in pretty different ways.

“We’ve got it under control,” he assures her, sipping his drink as he pretends with all his might not to be guilty of fraud.

“Well,” she sings at a ridiculously high pitch that makes him flinch. “If you say so…”

A hand lands on Harvey’s shoulder then, blessed relief, as Mike takes the empty seat on Harvey’s other side with a bright grin, effortlessly engulfing the bar with his presence.

“Miss Molotov,” he greets exuberantly. “Always a delight. If you wouldn’t mind just passing me that beer in front of you…we seem to have accidentally switched seats.”

Doing a truly mediocre job of hiding her startled surprise, Cecelia stands with a brittle smile, skating her fingertips down Harvey’s back.

“Remember what I told you,” she murmurs, a weak attempt at recovering her poise as she sashays toward the door.

Harvey closes his eyes tight.

“Is she gone?” he asks after a few seconds, cracking one eye open in Mike’s direction.

“Yeah,” Mike promises, briefly sliding his arm across Harvey’s shoulders for a reassuring hug. “What did she want?”

Harvey shakes his head. “Who knows. I think she was trying to pick me up.”

Arching his eyebrows, Mike looks pointedly down at Harvey’s left ring finger, and Harvey smirks.

“If you think you have anything to worry about, we’ve got bigger problems to tackle than just her.”

Mike gets a sour look on his face, but it was a joke. Just a joke, he was kidding. Mike knows Harvey’s in this for the long haul, he knows he’s not going anywhere.

Right? Right.

Right?

Harvey’s chest has just started to tense up, his cocky expression just starting to crack when Mike breaks into a grin, leaning in to bump their shoulders together and straining to peck Harvey’s cheek playfully.

“I think we’re good.”

Good.

Smitty polishes shot glasses with a little grin.

Okay. Everything’s good.

– – –

The first thing Harvey notices when Donna walks into his office on Thursday afternoon is that she’s lacking her usual vaunting confidence.

The second thing is that he can’t remember the last time she wore her glasses at the office. But actually, come to mention it…

“You don’t wear glasses.”

Donna needlessly adjusts the trendy black frames with the tip of her finger. “Well observed,” she says, slipping them off her face and holding them out for Harvey to take.

He raises his hand as though refusing seconds at dinner. “I’m good, thanks.”

She rolls her eyes, cocking her hip, and there’s some of that swagger he was missing.

“They’re spy glasses,” she says dryly. “And you should be thanking me for getting that recording for you, I think it took five years off my life.”

Harvey takes the glasses, holding them up and tilting them from side to side; the lens is probably in one of the pinprick holes in front of the hinge, disguised cleverly enough, but he can’t see any wires or flash drives, or any sort of storage device. Donna gives him about ten seconds to play around before heaving a world-weary sigh and holding her hand out to take them back.

“Thirty-two gig SD drive,” she says, pointing to the inner panel of the temple. “It’s a storage device, just like a USB, except it plugs into a different kind of port.”

Taking the glasses back, Harvey fiddles with the plastic until a small computer chip pops out. “How long did it take Benjamin to explain that to you?” he asks as he looks around his laptop for a slot that seems to be about the same size.

Donna shrugs, examining her nails. “I’ll never tell. And if he knows what’s good for him, neither will he.”

Harvey snickers.

“Call Mike,” she recommends when Harvey finds a slot he thinks will work. “I’m pretty sure you’ll want to watch this together.”

Dialing Mike’s extension, Harvey asks him to stop by as a window pops up on his laptop screen, prompting him to select the program he wants to use to open the drive he’s just inserted.

“What’s up?” Mike asks a few seconds later, hurrying into the office and surveying the scene. “Hey, nice spy glasses.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Donna exclaims. Mike offers her a high five, and she glares balefully at Harvey as though she didn’t need a tutorial from IT before she was allowed to use the damn things. Choosing to be merciful, he merely sighs, beckoning Mike around the desk.

“Open this,” he directs. Mike pats his head patronizingly and Harvey shakes him off, pointing to the computer screen; Mike clicks on a couple of icons and brings up a video file, apparently a first-person perspective shot of someone walking into a rather fussy-looking office that wouldn’t be too out of place on the set of _The Young Victoria_. A long-haired brunette sits at the ornate desk with her head lowered, writing furiously with something that catches the light of the stained glass desk lamp every now and again and makes a sharp scratching sound whenever she makes a particularly swooping stroke.

“Miss Molotov,” Donna’s disembodied voice greets, “it’s an absolute pleasure to meet you.”

Cecelia looks up from her desk with an insufferably disdainful expression on her face, pausing in her writing and lifting a polished fountain pen to hang in the air. “Esther, was it?” she says, and the camera bobs as Donna nods.

“Esther Edelstein, yes. I’m here to talk to you about your executive assistant position?”

Folding her arms on her desk and tipping her head back, Cecelia purses her lips irately. “That position has already been filled,” she says. “I believe you met Amy on your way in.”

“Of course,” Donna says at once, “of course, but, well. I have to ask. I mean, you are the best attorney in the city— No,” she corrects herself, “the _country,_ and the lawyer I work for now is just… He’s such a tyrant, I can’t even tell you. I love what I do, and I’m damn good, but… Working for him, it. It’s absolutely awful.”

Mike snorts as Harvey cringes, but the expression on Cecelia’s face fades from annoyance into at least mild interest, and on the other side of the table, Donna folds her arms and cocks her hips again as the recording keeps playing.

“I might be able to help you out,” Cecelia hedges. “Aaron Hatch at Weil Gotshal Manges owes me a favor.”

“Seriously?” Donna fawns. “That would be fantastic.”

“I could put in a call to Peter Heller at Latham and Watkins,” she goes on, “or Jasper Whitaker at Cravath Swaine Moore.”

“My god,” Donna gushes, “that’s amazing. You really know all those powerful men?”

Cecelia scoffs. “Know them?” she brags. “I’ve beaten them all. Jasper would pay _me_ if I’d let him be my associate.”

“Wow, you’re really at the top of the food chain,” Donna says. “But it’s amazing, you’re so young!”

“Hm,” Cecelia smiles, “you’re cute. I’ll pass your name along to Aaron.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Donna says, reaching out to shake Cecelia’s hand. “The sooner I can get out of that hellhole, the better.”

Mike pats Harvey’s shoulder consolingly as Harvey glares at Donna over the top of the computer, and she makes a circling “keep going” gesture with her hand as the video continues.

“It’s not so bad,” Cecelia says sweetly. “You just have to make sure the men know you’re not going to be playing by their rules. You can’t let them boss you around, that’s all.”

“Of course,” Donna says. “Thank you again, I don’t know how I can ever repay you for this.”

Closing her eyes, Cecelia leans back in her chair, idly spinning her pen between her fingers. “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” she says. “Or I will.”

The audio pauses for a second as Cecelia keeps spinning her pen, Donna apparently at a loss for words before the picture skitters a little as she begins to back away.

“Well, I really appreciate it,” she says. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“No,” Cecelia says, “you won’t.”

The office door closes, and the screen goes to black as the video ends. Mike and Harvey look at each other uncertainly, and then at Donna, who shrugs.

“I don’t know about you guys,” she says, “but I think there’s probably more to this story than she’s letting on.”

Talk about understatements. Mike frowns at the blank screen, but Harvey nods contemplatively as one of the names she mentioned suddenly clicks in his memory.

“I know Whitaker,” he recalls. “He and I worked together on an acquisition merger a few years ago; he’s a good guy, I’m surprised he and Molotov have history.”

Honestly, given that March of this year was the first he’d ever heard of her, much less met her, Harvey suspects he’d be surprised to learn that _anyone_ has a history with Cecelia Molotov, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.

“Maybe those guys know something,” Mike postulates. “Whitaker and the other two. It sure sounded like she thinks they owe her something, maybe they’ll tell us what. Or why.”

“That’s what I figured,” Donna says. “I’ll let you know if Esther gets a call from Mister Aaron Hatch, but in the meantime, I think you two have some personal lives to invade.”

Mike claps down on Harvey’s shoulder, his fingers trailing along Harvey’s neck and through the hair behind his ear as he draws his hand back, the way he sometimes does. Harvey’s mouth quirks up at the corner, and he begins feeling around the laptop for the SD card.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Mike says intently.

“Let me know if you need any help,” Donna offers, and Harvey nods in response to both.

Things are finally starting to look up.

– – –

“Well, Heller’s a bust.”

Harvey looks over at Mike, staring balefully at his cell phone as he hunches over his lap. It’s understandable; Heller’s secretary has been an absolute demon, guarding access to his phone lines with her fangs bared from the instant they indicated they were more interested in something in Peter’s past than in giving him business in the present. On the one hand, Harvey gets it, especially if the woman knows anything about what they’re looking into, and he’d want Donna to do the same for him if anyone came sniffing around; on the other, from the opposite side of the table, it’s pretty damn frustrating.

“You still waiting to hear back from Whitaker?” Mike asks, attempting to rally for their cause.

Harvey nods. “His secretary says he’s in court all day today, but he’ll call me when he’s got a minute.”

“So maybe sometime next year.”

“If we’re lucky.”

Mike smirks.

“Alright,” he says, raising the phone to his ear again, “I’m calling Hatch _one_ more time before I go down to his office myself.”

Nodding, Harvey turns back to his computer, scrolling through “Filled with Love in Darkness” as quickly as he possibly can. Already, he’s identified a considerable chunk of text lifted straight out of _The Great Gatsby_ and a bunch of passages from _1984_ , plus a few scattered lines from _The Virgin Suicides_ and one random appearance he had to look up that turned out to be copied from _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_ ; if he set Mike on the thing, they’d surely come up with more, but Harvey isn’t quite willing to subject him to this just yet. Still, despite his best efforts and the creeping sensation it sends up his spine, he has to admit to a certain perverse fascination with the whole endeavor.

“Mister Hatch,” Mike says suddenly, and Harvey jerks his attention from the manuscript as Mike offers him a surprised thumbs up. “This is Mike Ross at Pearson Specter Litt, I’ve— Yes, exactly… Well your name came up during a case I’m working on, regarding your association with Cecelia Molotov, and I’d like to discuss it with you, if you’ve got the time.”

Harvey watches with baited breath as Mike nods to himself, his lips parted a bit dazedly. On the plus side, he isn’t frowning, and he doesn’t look particularly upset, so that’s…encouraging.

“I completely understand,” Mike says then, the fire coming back into his eyes as he sets himself on the attack, “but if you’d be willing to just give me the basics of the situation, or even just point me in the right direction, it would be a huge help.”

Mike purses his lips this time, and Harvey drums his fingers nervously on his desk as he waits.

“Sir, I— No, I understand that, but…you have to understand how incriminating that sounds. I— No, I’m not trying to intimidate you, I’m just saying that things like that can have a way of coming back to haunt you.”

Not the most encouraging start, but it sounds like he’s not completely disinterested in their cause, so that’s something.

“If I’m forced to request a subpoena, I’m just saying— No, I just want to make sure you’re aware of the gravity of the situation.” Mike sighs, propping his elbow on his thigh and dropping his chin into his hand. “I appreciate that, we’ll be in touch.”

Hanging up the call, Mike tosses his phone onto the length of the lounge chair beside him. “Not a _total_ bust,” he says a bit disappointedly.

“What did he say?”

“Something definitely happened,” Mike says, standing restlessly. “I don’t know what it was, but he asked me if I’d accessed his financials, so it probably has something to do with money.”

“Laundering?” Harvey asks, closing his laptop.

Mike shakes his head. “They weren’t in on it together; I’m thinking more like a payoff. Bribery or something, but I’m not sure who was paying who, or why.”

Harvey presses his lips together thoughtfully. “Something tells me he wasn’t the guilty party.”

“Watch the bias,” Mike warns, and Harvey waves him off.

“Just a hunch. We’ll see what we can get out of Whitaker, maybe he’ll be more interested in fessing up.”

Raising his arm, Mike mimes toasting with an invisible glass. “Here’s hoping.”

Harvey grins.

– – –

“You’re sure she won’t just settle?”

“Mike, we are _at_ the _courthouse._ ”

Mike adjusts his messenger bag strap across his chest as they jog up the steps. “I _know,_ ” he grouses, “but this is gonna be such a shitshow, I was kind of hoping to avoid the theater part.”

“I don’t know what’s giving you _that_ idea,” Harvey says flippantly, holding the door open. Mike elbows him in the ribs as he steps inside, and Harvey thumps his briefcase against his ass as he follows, flashing their Secure Pass IDs and strolling right past the checkpoint.

“Hey,” he says lowly, “it may be a shitshow, but at least it’s gonna be a shitshow in our favor.”

Mike nods reluctantly as Harvey pats him on the back.

“Gentlemen,” a piercing voice cuts through the background chatter, making Mike’s back tense and Harvey wince.

“Cecelia,” Harvey says as they turn around with identical smiles on their faces. “Always a pleasure.”

“I’d imagine so,” she says, smiling slyly at Harvey and making a point of ignoring Mike.

They stand awkwardly in the hall for a minute as Cecelia continues trying to make eyes at Harvey, apparently oblivious to the impassivity of his stare, until Mike clears his throat and begins to turn back around.

“We’re supposed to be in court in about ten minutes,” he points out, mostly to Harvey, who nods and begins to turn as well.

“I understand your trepidation,” Cecelia says loudly, putting on a funny affectation that reminds Harvey remarkably of Madeline Kahn. “My case is rock solid, after all.”

Mike looks around exaggeratedly. “And your client is…”

“She’ll be here,” Cecelia assures him. “But I think the two of you have something more… _pressing_ to worry about, wouldn’t you agree?”

Mike rolls his eyes and Harvey urges them forward toward the courtroom, doing his best not to rise to the bait.

“Harvey,” she carries on, a little louder still, “I’m sure you remember our little _chat;_ I’ve my reputation as the queen of the court to uphold, after all, and I assure you I won’t keep it by _losing._ ”

“You keep calling yourself that,” Harvey blurts out, turning on his heel even as Mike tries to hold him back, “but if you’re so famous, how come I’ve never heard of you?”

Cecelia fades back a step, raising her hands reflexively in a weak defensive posture. “I usually send my associates to take care of any face-to-face meetings,” she says vaguely. “Not many people know who I am, you should be flattered that I’ve handled this case entirely myself.”

“But if you’re as famous as you say you are,” Harvey challenges, “why haven’t I ever heard your name? Why don’t I live in fear of the day I have to face down the mysterious ‘Queen of the Court’? And do you really expect me to believe you earned a nickname like that by never appearing at trial, because every time you show up to a case, you’re ‘revealing your identity’ to the prosecution, and if you think they’d keep some bullshit like that a secret, then you haven’t been working in this town _nearly_ long enough.”

Mike bites his lips nervously, keeping his hand on Harvey’s chest, but Harvey can see from the slight creasing at the corners of his eyes that he’d like to hear the answers to those questions too, that he’s enjoying the deer-in-headlights expression on Cecelia’s face at least as much as Harvey is. By mutual agreement, they give her about six seconds to come up with a reply; when she doesn’t, Harvey scoffs, allowing Mike to push him upright and shaking his head as he turns back toward the courtroom.

“I thought so.”

He and Mike make it all the way to the door, just about to open it and make their grand entrance when she finds her voice again:

“Don’t forget I know your secret.”

The threat lacks any of her usual efforts at poise and dignity, but it still manages to stop Harvey’s heart in his chest.

“Don’t write checks your ass can’t cash,” Mike retorts, shoving the door open and Harvey through it before she can mount a reply. Harvey looks at him askance, uncertain from where all this confidence has suddenly emerged, until he sees the sheen of terror in Mike’s eyes, the slightly faster-than-normal rise and fall of his chest as he tries to control his breathing and his rapid heart rate. Not confidence, then; just bravado.

That’s fine. That’ll do for now.

The door opens again, Cecelia breezing past them and dragging an unfamiliar blue-haired young woman behind her, and Harvey reaches out to squeeze Mike’s hand.

They’ve got this.

– – –

“Raise your right hand.”

The waifish blonde—Veronica Tal, the first and only witness Cecelia’s announced she intends to call—stands primly in the witness box and raises her right hand, holding her left behind her back as though she’s pretending to be in the armed forces or something.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” the registrar drones.

“I do,” Veronica replies.

“You may be seated.”

Veronica sits, smoothing out her skirt, and places her hands in her lap as Cecelia shuffles the papers on her table into a pile and stands.

“Miss Tal,” she begins companionably, setting her hand on the back of the blue-haired woman now seated beside her. “You have acquaintance with my client, Miss Anastasia Frost, correct?”

“That is correct,” Veronica enunciates.

Cecelia hums under her breath, tipping her chin down and smiling cockily. “And as her close friend, would you agree that the accusations being levied against Miss Frost, that she would embezzle money from her own company, are absurd, at best?”

“Objection,” Harvey cuts in. “Leading the witness.”

“Misstatement on the record,” Mike adds.

Judge Caffey looks down at Cecelia, who glares back defiantly. “Sustained.”

“I’ll rephrase,” she says, as though everything is going according to plan. “Miss Tal, have you ever known Miss Frost to engage in any acts such as those referred to in the charges levied?”

“No,” Veronica says to Cecelia’s encouraging nod.

“So surely you have no reason to suspect that she would engage in such acts _now._ ”

“Objection,” Harvey says again. “Leading.”

“Calls for speculation,” Mike adds.

“Sustained,” Caffey says. “Miss Molotov, are you sure you’ve adequately prepared for this hearing?”

Narrowing her eyes in an expression Harvey would be tempted to call calculating if she didn’t look so goddamn bitter, Cecelia steps around to the side of her table and folds her arms behind her back.

“I’m _quite_ prepared, Your Honor,” she snipes.

“The court would appreciate your acting like it,” Caffey replies. Mike snickers into his hand, and Harvey elbows him in the ribs.

Smiling tightly, Cecelia lowers her hands to her sides and flexes her fingers. “Of course, Your Honor. Miss Tal,” she turns sharply back to her witness, “have you ever known Miss Frost to have particularly extravagant tastes?”

“Objection, relevance,” Harvey interrupts.

“I’m getting there, Your Honor,” Cecelia promises, looking up at him with wide eyes.

“Sustained,” Caffey says irately. “Miss Molotov, if you don’t start taking this seriously, I’m going to have to hold you in contempt.”

“But—”

“Consider yourself warned.”

Cecelia bites her lip, her hands twitching. “Miss Tal,” she starts again, “do you have any record of Miss Frost having committed or benefited from the crimes she is being accused of here today?”

“Objection,” Harvey says again, more out of reflex now than actual forethought. “Lack of personal knowledge.”

“Miss Frost and Miss Tal are sisters-in-law,” Cecelia says hurriedly. “Miss Tal has access to all of her banking information and would certainly have noticed a sudden increase in the amount referred to in the charges.”

Caffey sighs, and Harvey imagines he’d rather like to roll his eyes if it didn’t detract so much from his dignity. “Which is?”

“Seventy-two million dollars,” Cecelia replies promptly. Harvey wonders how long she’s been waiting to spit that one out, why she didn’t just bring it up in her direct.

“Overruled,” Caffey says begrudgingly, “but you’re still on thin ice.”

Cecelia smiles at her witness.

“Please answer the question, Miss Tal.”

“I do not,” Veronica says.

“Well,” Cecelia demands, “then isn’t it reasonable to assume that she did not, in fact, come into possession of those seventy-two million dollars?”

“Objection,” Harvey says loudly, scarcely able to refrain from spreading his arms or slamming them down on the table in frustration. It might’ve been fun at first, but now she’s just wasting their time. “Calls for speculation!”

“Asked and answered,” Mike adds curtly, and Caffey nods.

“I’m inclined to agree; Miss Molotov, you’ve been warned. Bailiff, remove her from my courtroom; Miss Tal, you’re free to go, and Miss Frost, I recommend either settling your case _out_ of my courtroom, or getting yourself another attorney. Case dismissed.”

“Your Honor,” Cecelia fumes, storming into the well, “I object—”

Suddenly, all at once, Cecelia crosses some invisible line that kicks the bailiff into action, sending him storming forward to grab her arm, pulling her back toward the bar as Caffey shouts angrily and Veronica stumbles out of the witness stand with her hands pressed to her mouth. Mike flinches at the commotion as Harvey steps back towards him, and they watch in silent mystification as the bailiff drags Cecelia out into the hall.

The doors swing shut with some finality; after a moment’s pause, Caffey clears his throat.

“Miss Frost,” he directs. “If you’d be so kind as to exit the courtroom, I believe you and Miss Molotov have some business to attend to.”

Anastasia makes a funny sort of squeaking noise, scrambling up from her seat and rushing down the aisle and out the door; Veronica walks out behind her somewhat more sedately, only running the last two steps or so.

Mike and Harvey look at each other uncertainly, and Caffey clears his throat again.

“Gentlemen?”

Harvey raises his hand. “Thank you, Your Honor,” he says as they shuffle away from their table.

“Have a nice day!”

Rolling his eyes, Harvey pushes Mike down the aisle.

“‘Have a nice day’?” he mutters as Mike shrugs emphatically.

“I mean, he threw out the case…”

“Of course he threw it out, it was bullshit.”

“I was just being friendly!”

Harvey shakes his head as he pushes the door open. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And yet…”

“Don’t even.”

Mike grins.

As they make their way down the hall to the obstacle course that is the exit of the courthouse, Harvey makes a mental note to contact Jasper and Aaron to inform them that their testimony is no longer required; not three seconds later, his phone chimes a text alert, and he hopes neither of them went to _too_ great lengths to prepare for court today.

“Hatch?” Mike asks as they walk past security.

Harvey shakes his head, holding up his phone. “Molotov.”

_My client would like to chat._

Mike hums. “Sounds promising.”

“Yeah.” Harvey slips the phone back into his pocket. “Let’s hope so.”

Low expectations. That’ll be the key.

They’ve _so_ got this.

– – –

Mike and Harvey walk down a corridor easily recognizable from Donna’s covert video, right down to the garish silkscreen prints on the walls and sickly yellow lighting pouring down from the ceiling. The desk that ought to belong to Cecelia’s secretary is unoccupied when they arrive, but they only have to dally around for a minute or so before a suspiciously immaculate young woman, presumably Amy, walks out of the office at the end of the hall and takes the vacant seat, looking up at them with a practiced smile.

“Mister Specter, Mister Ross,” she greets. “Miss Molotov will be with you shortly.”

“Uh huh.” Harvey looks around at their surroundings, pausing at the two closed doors behind them. “Is that where we’ll be meeting with Miss Frost?”

“Miss Frost will not be in attendance,” Amy recites. “She has delegated full power of attorney to Miss Molotov. You may wait in the meeting room, if you should so desire.”

She points to the leftmost door, and Harvey nods, edging towards it.

“Let her know we’re here,” he requests as he sets his hand on the knob. Amy nods once, smiling again, and Mike steps a bit closer to Harvey.

“You getting a pod person vibe from this place or is it just me?” he murmurs as the door closes behind them.

“I’m not staying here one second longer than I have to,” Harvey murmurs back, taking a seat at the large table occupying the majority of the room and setting his briefcase down in front of him. For his part, Mike sticks his hands into his pockets and wanders around the table, observing their surroundings, scrutinizing the low bookcase along the back wall stuffed full of old law books with red fabric covers stamped with gold lettering.

“Hopefully not too long,” he muses.

Suddenly, as if waiting for the cue, the door bursts open.

“Gentlemen.” Cecelia hustles into the room as though they’re the ones who’ve kept her waiting rather than the other way around. “My client has expressed to me that she’d like to take you up on your original offer, one year’s salary in exchange for a seamless transition out of the company and her agreement to drop the wrongful termination charges.”

Harvey blinks slowly, and Mike walks back around the table to stand behind him.

“That offer was never on the table,” Harvey says, “and…any deals we might’ve been discussing came _off_ the table the minute your client decided to take this to trial.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” Cecelia dismisses, positioning herself in the seat opposite Harvey and meeting his eyes in some kind of challenge. “I think you might be more interested in capitulating to our terms once you see what I have here.”

With all the flourish of a jeweler setting out a twenty-four karat diamond, she sets an unlabeled file folder on the table. Mike looks down at it suspiciously and pulls out the chair to Harvey's right.

“And that is?” he asks, taking his seat.

Cecelia presses her fingertips to the file and slides it towards them. “I think you know.”

Fitting the edge of his tongue between his molars to keep from blurting out something uncouth, Harvey reaches for the folder and draws it back until it’s positioned between himself and Mike. Mike offers a shallow nod, and they flip the folder open solemnly.

Okay. So.

The first page, a glossy print, depicts what appears to be the interior of their bedroom, though the bed is made up with dishwater grey sheets Harvey doesn’t recognize and tucked in a style he’s never seen before. Mike’s figure stands superimposed in the middle of the floor, apparently idling about in a pair of pajamas Harvey knows for a fact neither of them own.

“I don’t imagine Jessica Pearson and Louis Litt would appreciate finding out that one of their managing partners is sleeping with the firm’s golden boy,” Cecelia says with affected indifference, as though this is all just in a day’s work and nothing out of the ordinary.

Mike sets his elbow on the table, smothering his mouth with one hand in a gesture that could easily look like shock but Harvey suspects is in fact an attempt to quiet his disbelieving laughter. Harvey sets the first print aside to reveal a mildly more scandalous one of the two of them embracing, Mike’s hands on Harvey’s face as he pulls him in for a kiss; he darts his glance up to Cecelia, but she seems to think she’s got them on the ropes without needing to add much else.

“Where did you get these?” he asks, pushing the first two prints toward Mike and revealing a third, again set in their bedroom, taken from the exact same angle, the bed made up with exactly the same unfamiliar sheets in the same unfamiliar style. This time, a pair of shirtless figures stand pressed up against the door and kissing enthusiastically as the larger of the two, a man someone might from a distance mistake for Harvey, reaches for his much smaller partner’s belt.

“I have my ways,” Cecelia confides, drumming her fingers against her cheek. “And if you don’t want me releasing these to your entire firm, I think you’ll listen to what I have to say.”

“Well, no,” Mike interrupts, shuffling the three pictures together and fanning them out on the table between them. “This picture,” he points to the first bedroom photo, “is from our building real estate broker’s website, and I don’t know where you got that shot of my face but that’s definitely not my body, because I don’t own these clothes. And I don’t know what porno you screenshot _these_ guys from,” he points to the third photo, “but Harvey and I are the same height, and I know I’m a little smaller around the waist but I’m not a goddamn _twink._ ”

Harvey does his level best to confine his cockiness to a single dramatically arched eyebrow as Cecelia’s face pales even more than usual, her fingers stilling against her face and her lips parting slightly as her plan unravels before her very eyes.

“I’m fairly sure these will be enough to cause suspicion,” she invents, shoving the pictures back in their direction. “And regardless of whether I have incontrovertible photographic evidence or not, the fact remains that you two _are_ sleeping together, and I’m sure an official inquiry will uncover more than sufficient proof of _that._ ”

“Is this how you win your cases?” Harvey asks with abrupt realization. “You blackmail your opponents into accepting your shitty deals? No wonder you didn’t know how to handle yourself in court, you probably just watched a couple episodes of _The Good Wife_ last night and figured you’d be fine.”

“You’ve got no evidence against me,” she says. “And that won’t stop me from sending these pictures to Pearson Specter Litt’s HR office and getting you both fired. Or— Harvey, you and I might be able to come to an amiable concordance,” she says, her voice suddenly silky. “I could do things for you that this little puppy has never even _dreamed_ of.”

Harvey presses his hands together in front of his face, utterly lost for words, and Mike scoffs, which he supposes is better than cackling outright at the sheer indecency of her proposal.

“Good luck with that.”

“Oh, you think I’m bluffing?” she challenges, pulling a cell phone out of her breast pocket. “All those images are saved on my internal drive, it’ll take me ten seconds to have them sent to every single member of your precious firm.”

Mike looks over at Harvey delightedly. “Louis is going to kill you.”

Harvey taps the pornographic third photo. “Donna’s never going to let you live this down.”

Cecelia looks between them suspiciously; Harvey takes a shred of pity on her and leans forward conspiratorially, pointing to Mike. “He’s my husband,” he stage whispers.

Mike leans in as well, raising his hand to shield his mouth from Harvey’s view and pointing at him from behind the flimsy barrier. “We have rings.”

“A family heirloom,” Cecelia declares. “A gift from his mother, I looked it up.”

“It is?” Falling back in his seat, Harvey raises his left hand to inspect the silver band. “Mike, I thought you got this at that place on Broadway and Eighty-fifth.”

“I’m pretty sure I did,” Mike agrees. “I wonder if anyone got fired for selling me a family heirloom.”

“I sure hope not, they’re always so nice to me.”

“Me too, I went there last month to look for something for Rachel’s birthday—”

“ _Alright,_ ” Cecelia hisses. “I _get_ it.”

Mike grins. “Anyway,” he says as Harvey sits back in his chair and Cecelia grimaces, “I think it’s pretty clear we’re not going to be giving in to your demands, so how about your client just drops her suit and _maybe_ we won’t charge you with about five hundred counts of blackmail and obstruction of justice?”

Folding her arms, she tips her chin up and does her level best to look down her nose at him. “You’ve no proof,” she boasts.

Mike sighs.

“Harvey?”

“Miss Molotov,” Harvey says in his best “closer” voice, leaning toward her as every trace of amusement vanishes from his expression, “we’ve put a lawsuit in motion against you on behalf of Misters Aaron Hatch and Jasper Whitaker in the amount of one million dollars each for emotional damages and loss of productivity, and they’ve agreed to join our team of over one hundred prosecutors and defense attorneys, all willing to testify to your multiple instances of gross misconduct and a truly impressive array of felonies committed over the past six years, which I’m sure even _you_ will agree is more than enough to get your license revoked in the state of New York.”

“Of course, you’re more than welcome to seek admission to other state bars,” Mike puts in, “but I think you’ll find it a challenge to make it past the Committee when they see this _mountain_ of corroborating evidence, which we’ll be sure to deliver to anyone who asks.”

“Or anyone who doesn’t,” Harvey adds as Mike nods.

Cecelia glowers at them. “Aaron would never.”

“Oh?” Mike pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and speed dials Donna. “Mister Hatch? Hi, it’s Mike Ross— Yes sir, this _is_ about the Molotov suit! I’m here with Miss Molotov—”

“Alright,” she cuts him off frantically, “alright. Fine.”

Mike grins cheekily and hangs up the call, slipping the phone back into his pocket as he and Harvey stand.

Harvey picks his briefcase up off the table, injecting the action with as much authority and prestige as he possibly can. “We’ll expect confirmation from your client by the end of the week,” he dictates, “and I imagine you’ll be hearing from the Appellate Division shortly in regards to your hearing.”

Holding the door open, Mike looks back over his shoulder at Cecelia, still sitting at the conference table with her arms crossed and her brow deeply furrowed, the ridiculous fake photos sprawled out before her.

“Have a nice day!”

– – –

Walking down the street back to Pearson Specter Litt, Harvey slips his free hand into his pocket and grins up at the clear blue sky.

“So how about those photos?”

“Don’t even,” Mike says darkly. “I can’t believe I was so scared of her.”

“ _I_ can’t believe she did all that research into my background and she still didn’t know I was _married._ ”

“Willful ignorance,” Mike advises. “You didn’t see how hard she was hitting on you.”

“Oh,” Harvey shudders at the memory of her scanty green evening dress, “I got a pretty good idea.”

Mike smiles sedately, reaching out as they walk to fish Harvey’s hand out of his pocket and hold it carefully.

“I’m glad we got her out of the bar,” he muses.

“We’ve done a service to our entire profession,” Harvey agrees.

Mike murmurs an indistinct noise, and Harvey looks over at him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Mike assures him at once. “I was just thinking… I mean, she might’ve been fucking nuts, but…the next one might not be.”

Tightening his grip on Mike’s hand, Harvey nods thoughtfully. Five years is an awfully long time to get away with something like this without any real consequences, and satisfying as it may have been to get the drop on Cecelia Molotov, at the end of the day, wasn’t the whole case really just a reminder of the terrible consequences that may well be awaiting them down the line?

Well, Harvey’ll be damned if he’s ever going to put Mike through something like that.

“You know,” he notes as they continue to walk, “it’s been awhile since I had lunch with my old pal Doug Spivak.”

“Doug Spivak?” Mike obliges, and Harvey purses his lips thoughtfully.

“Yeah, a buddy of mine from Harvard,” he says. “He always wanted to be a judge; last I heard, he’d become a member of the Disciplinary Committee of the NYSUCS.”

Mike grins down at the ground and releases Harvey’s hand. “Oh yeah?”

“Mm.” Harvey looks over out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe we’ll find something to talk about.”

“Can’t imagine what.”

“We’re pretty smart guys, I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

Mike laughs softly, picking his head back up to stare off into the distance as they walk; a moment later, it seems to occur to him that Harvey isn’t laughing—or saying anything at all, in fact.

“Wait,” he stammers, “are you serious?”

Taking a deep breath, Harvey shrugs.

“Gotta start somewhere.”

And hey, if they can pull something good out of this whole goddamn mess of a case, maybe even something great, then who’s to say it wasn’t all worth it?

Actually, that might be pushing it. Except then Mike slings his arm across Harvey’s shoulders, smiling his thousand-watt smile, and okay, maybe he’s exaggerating a _little,_ but not _too_ much.

Anyway, it’ll only be a few more days until this is nothing but a funny story and a new beginning.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

**Author's Note:**

> The memorandum Mike brings to Harvey’s attention is lifted as much as possible from the first “Sample Letter Requesting an Informational Meeting” at the website [the balance careers](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/sample-letter-requesting-an-informational-meeting-2060244).
> 
> Tony Giannopoulos is the owner of Giannopoulos Holdings Limited, Hessington Oil, and Sidwell Investment Group, the firm where Mike worked as an investment banker in Season 4.
> 
> Joseph Morgan is an actor best known for his role as Niklaus “Klaus” Mikaelson from _The Vampire Diaries_.
> 
> Barack Hussein Obama II was the forty-fourth President of the United States (2009-2017).
> 
> Wrongful termination suits usually make it to trial about a year after filing, if settlement negotiations don’t resolve the matter beforehand.
> 
> [La Pizza Fresca Ristorante](http://www.lapizzafrescaristorante.com/home.html) is a middling Italian restaurant in New York City which prides itself on its traditional Italian pizzas.
> 
> [Weil, Gotshal & Manges](https://www.weil.com/), [Latham & Watkins](https://www.lw.com/), and [Cravath, Swaine & Moore](https://www.cravath.com/) are three of [Forbes Most “Prestigious” Law Firms](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryndill/2015/06/26/annual-ranking-showcases-the-most-prestigious-law-firms-in-the-u-s/#76e7d14014c2).
> 
> Esther Edelstein is Louis’s sister.


End file.
